Regional

A PEOPLE’S Action Party MP called on his organisation to consider legal action yesterday after “vicious” edits were made to its Wikipedia page.

Tampines GRC MP Baey Yam Keng spoke out after a user of the website changed the name of the party to “Party Against People” and added lines such as “down with the fascists” and “vote for Opposition” .

According to the page’s publicly available editing history, the user who first made the changes appeared to have done so on Wednesday afternoon under the name “AlikVesilev”.

The user claimed that “proof of (the PAP’s) suppression of freedom of speech” was demonstrated by the sacking of blogger Roy Ngerng by Tan Tock Seng Hospital this week, a move later backed by the Health Ministry.

Ngerng is being sued by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong for defamation over a blog post about the Central Provident Fund.

Baey said yesterday that the PAP first discovered the modifications yesterday morning. The party tried to re-edit the page but noticed that “a few Wikipedia accounts were furiously doing edits as well”.

“Wikipedia has made it clear that these edits constitute vandalism and they are certainly not something we would condone or support,” said Baey.

“Whether any legal action can be taken is something we need to consider. We need to look at whether there is indeed any legal recourse for us. Ultimately it is quite a vicious attack.” — The Straits Times / Asia News Network